


Erasure and New Beginnings

by betheflame



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Established Relationship, Getting Back Together, Italian Tony Stark, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29094360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betheflame/pseuds/betheflame
Summary: Bucky's skin has always told their story - even when they're apart.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 23
Kudos: 112
Collections: Winteriron Winter Stockings 2020





	Erasure and New Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monobuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monobuu/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [monobuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monobuu/pseuds/monobuu) in the [winteriron_winter_stockings_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/winteriron_winter_stockings_2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> 1) SHORT PROMPTS  
> I. Getting back together  
> II. Heavily-tattooed Bucky  
> 4) LIKES (OPTIONAL)  
> TATTOOED BUCKY. Someone please give me tattooed Bucky. Soulmates is probably my number one favorite trope, especially if they have identifying marks. 
> 
> Your wish is my command, buu.

_**Last Week** _

Bucky’s lawyer looked at him incredulously. “Your soulmarks spread more?”

He nodded. “I know that sounds insane, I do, but they’ve actually started erasing the rest of my tattoos.”

Bucky unbuttoned a few buttons on his shirt to show Nat, who whistled through her teeth. “Damn, Buck. I saw your arms, but I thought...”

“I know.”

“So you want to cancel the divorce on the grounds of soulmarks?”

Bucky made a face. “Can we? Tony’s talking to Steve right now -”

“I know, Buck. I can see Steve’s calendar just like he can see mine,” Nat said with a smirk, and Bucky lazily flipped her off. “But yes, you can. Essentially, the state bows to the laws of the universe, and is happy to legally correct human idiocy. Which is, you know, what you and Tony are. Idiots.”

Bucky grimaced. “Our divorce was ill-advised.”

“You think?” Nat snorted. “The day you signed the papers, Tony got in a car accident. The first time you went on a date with someone, there was a snowstorm that paralyzed New York for a day. When Tony -”

“We get it, Romanova. Steve already did this lecture,” Bucky interrupted her. “Our refusal to talk about our issues like adults has affected the entire ecosystem of our lives, not just the two of us. The soulmagician we went to said that if we had mutually decided on a divorce after consulting experts, the universe would have left us alone. The chaos was because we were children about it.”

“I would be inclined to agree,” Nat said with an arched eyebrow.

“I hate you, you know,” Bucky said.

“Mutual, Barnesy,” Nat replied with a smirk. “Now, let’s change that back to Stark, shall we?”

* * *

_**Five Months Earlier** _

“THEN WHY DID YOU TAKE THE JOB?!” Bucky screamed at his ex-husband, even as he could feel marks wind across his skin.

“Because it was what was best for us,” Tony replied through gritted teeth. “It meant we could pay off the entire mortgage, that we could finally have money to adopt, that we -”

“But none of that matters if you were working IN DUBAI, and I was in MANFUCKINGHATTAN,” Bucky screamed again. The tears were threatening, as they always did, when the pair reached this point in the fight.

“For three months! Three fucking months, Buck, that’s all it would have been,” Tony replied.

Bucky had a decision to make and he knew it. He could say what he always said here, that his real problem was that Tony didn’t even ask him, etcetera, etcetera, or he could tell the truth.

His skin hurt, his tattoos were disappearing, and his soul was raw.

It was time for the truth.

“It killed me,” he said softly, “the idea that you were happy to spend that time without me, when I can’t get a good night’s sleep unless you’re in bed with me. It killed me.”

The air in the room changed, and suddenly Tony was still. He’d been ranting and stomping and pacing, but now he was still. “Are you… Bucky, baby, I was dying. I was dying at the idea of being apart from you, but we didn’t have another option.”

“I could have gotten a job, Tony,” Bucky said.

“You have a job,” Tony growled.

“I have a hobby that barely pays the bills,” Bucky replied. They both knew he’d been living off alimony since they divorced.

“You have a fucking gift,” Tony’s growl continued. “You are an amazing writer, and just because you signed the world’s most predatory contract when you were 22, doesn’t mean -”

“I’m a grown ass man, Tony, and I can’t keep living off of you!”

“Why the hell not?” Tony said, throwing his arms wide. “That was the deal, wasn’t it? I make money like I breathe, you make people happy. I pay for our lives, you make them worthwhile. Those were the vows. So I could not, for the goddamn life of me, figure out why I was in trouble for keeping them.”

“Because you didn’t even ask if I wanted to go,” Bucky snapped. If he was a more physically dramatic person, he would have snapped his hands over his mouth. He had not planned on saying that.

Tony took deliberate steps towards him from across the room; the nondescript hotel room they’d been in for hours, just like all the other nondescript ones they’d met in over the past two years. Where they’d frantically tear each other’s clothes off, and Bucky’s skin felt calm for a little while.

“James,” Tony said, somehow enunciating every syllable carefully even though there was only one. “I would have taken you with me in a moment, I just didn’t think… you always said… I would have never asked you to choose between being near your family and being with me.”

“But YOU are my family, you absolutely fucking idiot,” Bucky said on a laugh, and realized the tears that had been threatening for hours were finally falling. “Becca’s going to be sick for the rest of her life, Ma will be stressed out for the rest of hers, but you, Anthony Edward, is who I stood up in front of everyone for and made fucking vows.” He whipped his shirt back over his head, and started pointing. “Do you know what this used to be? A crown. I got it tattooed when I was drunk off my ass in Vegas with Steve and Sam, and I was the king of the world because I had just met you. See what it is now?”

“It’s a picnic table,” Tony said.

“That’s right. Instead of a part of our story that I chose to celebrate, my body is reminding me of all the times we fucked up,” Bucky said. He pointed again. “What about this?”

“That used to be the -”

“And when you licked it,” Bucky said, “I went wild. And now it’s a black mark that I think is supposed to be an amoeba, but I can’t tell.”

“I was afraid to ask why they were all different,” Tony said.

“Because we are,” Bucky said, sobbing at this point and not ashamed of it. “I used my body to tell our story, and now the universe is doing the same.”

Tony ran his fingers over the one on Bucky’s right pectoral, which had tentacles wrapping around his nipple. “Is this supposed to be a hydra monster?”

“It’s who you saved me from,” Bucky said quietly. “Without you, it’s who I am.”

Tony pressed his mouth to it, tenderly. Bucky threw his head back in pleasure. That particular one had been burning for days, but as soon as Tony’s mouth hit it, the whole mark cooled.

“You would never, and I mean never,” Tony swore, “taken Pierce up on his offer. With or without me. It’s not who you are.”

“You gave me the strength to say no,” Bucky said. “And I’m so tired of trying to find that same strength on my own, baby. I gave you part of me so long ago, that trying to live this half-life is killing me.”

“I hate living without you,” Tony confessed. “I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“Then can we stop?” Bucky asked. “Can we go to therapy or something and talk about our issues? My skin can’t take much more of this.”

Tony snorted softly. “My heart can’t either.”

* * *

_**Present Day** _

“I can’t believe it happens in real time,” Tony marveled.

They were lying in their new living room - a fresh house for a fresh start - on the sofa that had come from their old life. Bucky was flat on his back, but Tony was curled on his side between the back of the couch and Bucky - their perpetually favorite position. As they talked, Bucky’s tattoos shifted from the marks that had happened when they were apart, to the tattoos he had chosen when they were together.

“I can’t figure out why they’re in the order they’re in,” Bucky confessed, “but I’m not surprised the ones that started to change were all the super serious ones first.”

“I’m glad this one is back,” Tony said. He traced the outline of the words they’d chosen together - a matching set was scrawled on the underside of Tony’s ribs. Tony had Bucky’s handwriting, and Bucky had Tony’s: כל עוד שנינו נחיה was scrawled on Tony, and ‘per tutto il tempo che vivremo entrambi’ on Bucky. _For as long as we both shall live_ in the languages their mothers spoke.

“I missed it,” Tony continued. “I looked for it every time we were together, and the first time I saw the black line instead, I fought tears.”

“I was so mad at you,” Bucky said with a small laugh. “That night was the very definition of hate fucking.”

“It was hot, though,” Tony said. “Heartbreaking, but hot as fuck.”

“Let’s focus on the hot as fuck part from here on out,” Bucky said.

“Agreed.”


End file.
